Rifftrax Live! Santa And The Ice Cream Bunny

Rifftrax Live! Santa And The Ice Cream Bunny Recap by Bobby LePire.

If you are reading my reviews on the regular, and don’t know what Rifftrax is, that makes me sad. As I have written about before, Rifftrax is the brainchild of Mike Nelson- he of MST3K fame- in which he, once again, does a commentary over a movie, making fun of it. Not too long after its conception, two of the other Mystery Science stars joined in, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy. They got popular enough to start doing live riffs in movie theaters, with it being broadcast to select theaters nationwide. Their latest one was yesterday (12/3/2015), and marked the end of this year’s live performances, dubbed “The Crappening”. Is it a fitting end to a very successful year for the talented trio (and their employees)?

While waiting for the show proper to begin, the audience was treated to a variety of humorous Christmas songs by the likes of Weird Al, Jonathan Coulton, and other awesome people/ groups, while a preshow of gags and jokes played out. These songs set the mood nicely, and I always love singing along to Weird Al, so yay! The preshow was mix of renamed holiday classics to be more depressing, “Werner Herzog’s Christmas Story”, little known ‘facts’- if you watch all 24-hours of “A Christmas Story” you’ll eventually see the unrated version, where Ralpjie says the f-word, and generally funny tidbits.

At 8pm, Mike, Kevin, and Bill came onto the stage, did a little introduction, But I know what you are needing to know, waiting with bated breath to find out dear reader. How was the stage decorated this time? As per the norm, the Belcourt Theater’s stage was designed and decorated to reflect the feature presentation. “Santa And The Ice Cream Bunny” takes place in Florida, so the set had a sandy beach backdrop, with loungers and fake palm trees across the stage; or, at least, I presume the trees were fake. Off of stage right, next to the screen, just in front of the curtains was, what else, Santa’s sleigh! It was a fun set, that fit with the movie nicely.

So, they came onto and started the first of three shorts. Well, before we discuss the main feature, let’s dive into these three horrifying messes of Christmas cheer.

Santa Claus’ Story- is a b&w short, that starts off as “Twas The Night Before Christmas”, and then morphs into Santa explaining to two siblings about the Monkey Santa Claus. This makes as much sense as it sounds. Our professional joke tellers get so much mileage out of this bizarreness, whether it is renaming holidays to be more primate orientated, “The Festival Of Flinging”, or attempting to glean what Santa is going on about in trying to explain to Virginia (one of the kids, and yes, that is the name the writer of the short went with) why/ how Santa Claus will live on forever. Truly hilarious.

Custard The Dragon- is a short starring a bunch of children, most of them dressed as animals- a rat, a cat, a dog, and the titular dragon, all of whom live in a very small place, with a little girl. For some reason, the narrator only speaks in rhyme, and the riffing maestros attempt to do the same, and get (intentionally) flustered. Some crazy funny stuff, especially when discussing what came of the pirate; “... a bowl full of pirate leftovers”!

Santa’s Enchanted Village- is creepy as hell, and if the Christmas spirit ever really does die out, I know this is 10000% to blame. Stinky The Skunk has a job to do, but (s)he (I am not sure), but wants to play, so she leaves her post to frolic. The Vicious Wolf gets angry at this, and has to track Stinky down. Meanwhile, a puppet play is going on, with “elves” who are probably trapped there against their will. From the “sound of two accordings doing it” every time the Wolf walks, to the mimicking of the forced, desperate pleas of “wonderful”, and the fifthe dimension hopping of Merlin and Santa’s offices, this was nonstop hilarity from the Rifftraxers. If/ when this gets released, you owe it to yourself to watch it.

And now, the main feature-

Santa And The Ice Cream Bunny- is a cheaply made, awkward semi-musical of boredom. Santa’s sleigh gets stuck in the sands on a Florida beach very close to Christmas time- why he is there and not at work in the North Pole is never explained- and his reindeer got so hot they left them. Santa barely leaves the sleigh, because otherwise there’d be no movie. So, he sends a telepathic (?) message out to a large group of kids, and enlists them to help. After some less than fruitful attempts, Santa tells the children the story of ‘Jack And The Beanstalk’ (a short within the movie) to keep their hopes up. Ten minutes before the end, the Ice Cream Bunny finally shows up.

So, was the riffing of this Christmas non-classic as good as the shorts? Hell yeah it was! This is easily the best live riff I have seen. Very few pauses or unintentional silences, just nonstop insanity, and it’s always a good sign when the performers crack themselves up, which happened a few times here; plus, Mike did his insanely great, absolutely spot on Droopy Dog impersonation, which is always a delight.

Since I am not going to spoil the whole thing for you, here’s just a quick list of some of the best moments/ lines from last night’s show (with some context, if need be):

There are several shots of Santa looking like a recently fired Mall Santa, just being depressed on his sleigh. Early on, he is described as now being an official resident of Florida, so “... he’s addicted to meth, takes his shirt off to cross the interstate to buy a pack of smokes”. That was my wife’s favorite moment of the show.
Kevin Murphy made a few really good, if awkwardly time jokes, so Mike encouraged everyone to boo him, but that only gave Kevin more strength. Shortly thereafter, Mike made a groan-inducing comment, and he asked everyone to “boo me, I deserve it”.
During the ‘Jack And The Beanstalk’ segment, one of the three (I don’t recall who sadly), said that the giants were “renting the castle out from some slightly larger giants”, as the giant’s chair was too big, even for him.
As the Ice Cream Bunny’s firetruck- yes, the Ice Cream Bunny, who is neither made from, nor gives out ice cream drives a firetruck- finally (finally!) approaches there is a shot of the camera at a low angle, looking up at Santa Claus, as he stands up, towering over the audience, and gets directly in the path of the sun. “Bow to me puny mortals, as I bloat out the sun”. This was my favorite joke of the night.

Hopefully, I made this sound as awesome as it truly was. It was a nice kickoff to the holiday season, and a great way for Rifftrax virtuosos to cap their year off.

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